Known to America as the Unabomber (university and airline bomber), former math professor Theodore Kaczynski pled guilty to sending letter bombs off and on over a span of years. Doing so saved him from the death penalty. Instead, he was given life without chance for parole.
Growing up in Chicago, he was brilliant but a social pariah. Math was his great love, and he and his unusually high IQ graduated from Harvard and went on to earn a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.
Kaczynski was hired in 1967 to teach math at the University of California at Berkley, but he remained there for only two years. Two more years after resigning his academic position, he moved into an isolated cabin in Montana, making a spare living via odd jobs.
The first of 16 letter bombs he mailed to a strange variety of targets was in 1978, the last, in 1995. His letter bombs killed three people and injured 23 more.
In 1995, he offered to stop sending the bombs if a major newspaper would publish his "manifesto," in which he railed at the things that irked him most about modern-day life, especially as regards technology. The manifesto was published both in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
His younger brother David recognized some of his words and thoughts and turned him in to authorities, who arrested him at his cabin.
His lawyer's attempt to have him found not guilty by reason of insanity failed.
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